Jack Docherty

“IT will never last,” they all said, when a new television station offering barmy game shows, late-night baseball and an occasional foggy glimpse of soft-porn came over the horizon.

And yet, despite the never-ending formation of new cut-and-shut channels and streaming services competing for our eyes in the years since, Channel 5 somehow stuck it out and will be celebrating 25 years in the game next month. Bon anniversaire to them all – and their Yorkshire farm.

Still, you can’t fault the boo boys for having doubts, if you can cast your minds back to how it all started and the attempt to hook in a weeknight audience with what was hoped would be a must see David Letterman-type talk show. For a long time, TV executives across the industry, then and now, had craved creating something of this ilk: razzmatazz, star guests, a house band to josh with and a host full of sparkling, topical repartee coming at you from a central London venue.

David Bowie, on a freshly hatched Channel 5

And so it was that Channel 5 chose Jack Docherty as their Letterman, their guy. He was installed in the Whitehall Theatre complete with big posters of his face on the side of that gorgeous art deco building. Each evening they would film the show in an almost-live way and then push it out later in the night, an undertaking that not even the established channels would commit to.

Two years later, however, it was all over: Docherty had struggled to get the guests purring and whoever was booking them seemed to be finding it harder and harder to get the big-sell headliners.

Zany ideas that seemed to want to be a sort of The Big Breakfast At Night didn’t come off and luckily nobody was really watching by the time a segment aired about comedian Richard Herring’s former jobs. It had him searching the set for a lost invoice, while his comedy partner Stewart Lee audibly sighed through the whole experience.

It’s easy to sneer, of course, but Channel 5 steadied the ship enough to still be here a lifetime later, and Docherty seems happier: in recent interviews he has talked about finding his love of acting and writing in Scotland again.

Trafalgar Studios, home to the Jack Docherty Show when it was the Whitehall Theatre. Photo: Turquoisefish

That lovely theatre was changed into the Trafalgar Studios – which is always a very pleasant place to watch a show.

And while his loud suits and misfiring interviews may not be remembered well now, Docherty’s time behind the desk has lasting legacies that can’t all be lost in time. It’s rarely remembered that Mitchell (David) and Webb (Robert), and Jesse Armstrong, one of the men behind Succession, had early writing gigs on the show.

Love him or hate him but certainly a better talk show host, Graham Norton found a way up to much bigger things by doing a lot of Channel 5 work in its infancy, including occasionally deputising for Docherty.

What’s more, if you have the time – look up David Bowie’s appearance on the show; it’s almost eye-rubbing to think that someone that big turned up to listen to the Docherty drone, but he did.

Bowie was in super-relaxed mood and seemed to enjoy the host’s company much more than the audience ever did.

Asked if he remembered the 1970s, Bowie, then all in 90s black plasti-leather and with glowing bog brush hair, replied: “I’ve read up on it a lot”, adding: “It’s honestly a bit like that. I get past ’74 and I really have to read up on not only what I did but what everyone else did.”

As Channel 5 pops the party bangers, no doubt they will feel the same and blank out those messy early days.